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Puree of Oyster Plant
Trim off stems, scrape and thoroughly wash two medium bunches of oyster plants. Drain and slice very fine, place in a saucepan with one ounce butter and gently fry until tender, stirring once in a while, then add two tablespoons flour, and mix well while heating two minutes. Moisten with two quarts broth or water, add two finely sliced medium onions, two finely sliced leeks and one branch parsley. Season with one teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and one saltspoon grated nutmeg. Cover pan and let slowly boil one hour. Remove, press the soup through a sieve into a basin, then through a Chinese strainer into the same saucepan previously wiped, pour in one pint milk and two gills cream; add at the same time a half ounce fresh butter. Continually mix with wooden spoon while boiling five minutes. Pour soup into a soup tureen and serve with a plate of bread croutons separately.
A classic velvety root soup that depends almost entirely on one ingredient most shops no longer stock under this name. The method is sound; the vocabulary and a few quantities need translating.
- Oyster plant is salsifyThe name refers to salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) or its near relative scorzonera, so called because the cooked root is said to taste faintly of oysters. Two medium bunches is roughly 1.5 to 2 lb of untrimmed root; look for it at farmers' markets and Italian or Eastern European grocers in late autumn and winter.
- Scrape into acidulated waterSalsify oxidises to a dull grey within minutes of peeling, and its sap is sticky enough to coat your hands. Drop the slices into water with lemon juice or vinegar as you work, or the finished puree will be beige rather than ivory.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is one cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The finished soup takes 2 quarts broth, 1 pint milk and 1 cup cream, which is a large pot.
- Do not let the root colour"Gently fry until tender" means sweating in butter over low heat with the lid ajar, not browning. Any colour on the salsify muddies both the flavour and the pale finish the recipe is aiming at.
- The Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. The double pass, first through an ordinary sieve with a pestle or ladle to force the pulp through, then through the chinois to catch fibre, is what makes this a puree rather than a vegetable soup. Salsify is stringy enough that skipping the second pass is noticeable.
- Butter quantitiesOne ounce is 2 tablespoons; the half ounce finished off at the end is 1 tablespoon, stirred in for gloss. It is a modest amount of fat for two quarts of liquid, which is why the cream matters.
- The final five minutesOnce the milk and cream go in, keep it at a bare simmer and keep the spoon moving. A hard boil with the flour-thickened base and dairy in the pot will catch on the bottom and scorch.
- YieldClose to 3 quarts of liquid goes into the pot in all, though an hour's covered boiling will reduce that somewhat; enough for eight to ten as a first course. Croutons served separately, as instructed, so they stay crisp.
Salsify was a common kitchen-garden root in Europe from the seventeenth century onward and remained familiar in American gardens through the nineteenth, when seed catalogues sold it freely under the name oyster plant or vegetable oyster. The comparison to oysters is traditional rather than exact. Its near-disappearance from markets has less to do with taste than with handling: the roots are long, thin, dirty, awkward to peel and quick to discolour, which suits a garden and a household cook with time far better than commercial produce distribution. Recipes of this type, a sweated root thickened with a butter-and-flour roux, simmered in broth, sieved twice and finished with milk and cream, follow the standard French potage purée formula found in the soup chapters of grand hotel cookbooks of the early twentieth century.